Barr was known as a strong defender of Presidential power and wrote advisory opinions justifying the U.S. invasion of Panama and arrest of Manuel Noriega, and a controversial opinion that the F.B.I. could enter onto foreign soil without the consent of the host government to apprehend fugitives wanted by the United States government for terrorism or drug-trafficking.[7]

In May 1990, Barr was appointed Deputy Attorney General, the official responsible for day-to-day management of the Department. According to media reports, Barr was generally praised for his professional management of the Department.[8]

During August 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh resigned to campaign for the Senate, Barr was named Acting Attorney General.[9] Three days after Barr accepted that position, 121 Cuban inmates, awaiting deportation to Cuba, seized 9 hostages at the Talladega federal prison. He directed the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team to assault the prison, which resulted in rescuing all hostages without loss of life.[10]

It was reported that President Bush was impressed with Barr's management of the hostage crisis; weeks later, President Bush nominated him as Attorney General.[11]

Barr's two-day confirmation hearing was "unusually placid", and he received a good reception from both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.[12] Asked whether he thought a constitutional right to privacy included the right to an abortion, Barr responded that he believed the constitution was not originally intended to create a right to abortion; that Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators".[12] "Barr also said at the hearings that Roe v. Wade was 'the law of the land' and claimed he did not have 'fixed or settled views' on abortion."[13] Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden, though disagreeing with Barr, responded that it was the "first candid answer" he had heard from a nominee on a question that witnesses would normally evade; Biden hailed Barr as "a throwback to the days when we actually had attorneys general that would talk to you."[14] Barr was approved unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, was confirmed by voice vote by the full Senate,[15] and was sworn in as Attorney General on November 26, 1991.[1]

According to The New York Times, Barr's tenure started with anti-crime measures. In an effort to prioritize violent crime Barr reassigned three hundred F.B.I. agents from counterintelligence work to investigations of gang violence, which the Times called, "the largest single manpower shift in the bureau's history."[16]

In October 1991, Barr appointed then retired Democratic Chicago judge Nicholas Bua as special counsel in the Inslaw scandal. Bua's 1993 report found the Department of no wrong doing in the matter.[17]

On 24 December 1992, nearing the end of his term in office after being defeated by Bill Clinton the previous month, George H. W. Bush pardoned[21] six administration officials, five who had been found guilty on charges relating to the Iran–Contra affair. Barr was consulted extensively regarding the pardons,[22] and especially advocated for the pardon of former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, who had not yet come to trial.[23][24]

The media described Barr as staunchly conservative.[16]The New York Times described the "central theme" of his tenure to be: "his contention that violent crime can be reduced only by expanding Federal and state prisons to jail habitual violent offenders."[16] At the same time, reporters consistently described Barr as affable with a dry, self-deprecating wit.[25]

After his tenure at the Department of Justice, Barr spent more than 14 years as a senior corporate executive. At the end of 2008 he retired from Verizon Communications, having served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of GTE Corporation from 1994 until that company merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon. During his corporate tenure, Barr directed a successful litigation campaign by the local telephone industry to achieve deregulation by scuttling a series of FCC rules, personally arguing several cases in the federal courts of appeals and the Supreme Court.[26]

In his adopted home state of Virginia, Barr was appointed during 1994 by then-Governor George Allen to co-chair a commission to reform the criminal justice system and abolish parole in the state.[27] He served on the Board of Visitors of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg from 1997 to 2005.[28] He became an independent director of Time Warner (now WarnerMedia) in July 2009.

On December 7, 2018, PresidentDonald Trump announced his nomination of Barr for Attorney General to succeed Jeff Sessions.[30] Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman reported that Trump had sought Barr as chief defence lawyer for Trump regarding the Russian investigation in 2017 this was after Barr supported Trump in his firing of Comey and questioned some of Mueller’s prosecutors because of political donations they have made previously.[31][32][33]

As Deputy Attorney General, Barr – together with others at the Department of Justice – successfully pushed for the withdrawal of a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would have allowed people with HIV/AIDS into the United States.[34] He also advocated the use of Guantanamo Bay to prevent Haitian refugees and HIV infected peoples from claiming asylum in the United States.[24] According to Vox in December 2018, Barr took hardline positions on immigration as Attorney General in the Bush Administration.[35]

In 1991, Barr stated that he believed the framers of the Constitution did not originally intend to create a right to abortion; that Roe v. Wade was thus wrongly decided; and that abortion should be a "legitimate issue for state legislators."[12] "Barr also said at the hearings that Roe v. Wade was 'the law of the land' and claimed he did not have 'fixed or settled views' on abortion."[13]

In a 1995 scholarly article for the The Catholic Lawyer, Barr states that American government is "predicated precisely" on the Judeo-Christian system.[36][36]:3 Barr grapples with the challenge of representing Catholicism "in an increasingly militant, secular age."[36]:1 Barr asserts that there are three ways secularists use "law as a legal weapon."[36]:8 The first method is through elimination of traditional moral norms through legislation and litigation; Barr cites the elimination of the barriers to divorce and the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade as examples of this method.[36]:8 The second is the promotion of moral relativism through the passage of laws that dissolve moral consensus and enforce neutrality.[36]:8 Barr draws attention to a 1987 case, Gay Rights Coalition v. Georgetown University, which "compel[s] Georgetown University to treat homosexual activist groups like any other student group."[36]:9 The third method is the use of law directly against religion; as an example of this method, Barr cites efforts to use the Establishment Clause to exclude religiously motivated citizens from the public square.[36]:9 Concluding, Barr states the need to "restructure education and take advantage of existing tax deductions for charitable institutions to promote Catholic education."[36]:12

Barr believed that then-Republican candidate Donald J. Trump's calls for investigating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for President, were appropriate. He told The New York Times that "there is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation. Although an investigation shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation." In the same Times piece, Barr added that an investigation into the Uranium One controversy was more warranted than looking into whether Trump conspired with Russia: "To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility."[38] Elsewhere, Barr has commented that "I don’t think all this stuff about throwing [Hillary Clinton] in jail or jumping to the conclusion that she should be prosecuted is appropriate. But I do think that there are things that should be investigated that haven’t been investigated."[39]

Barr has been critical of the Mueller investigation saying that it was not balanced, “In my view, prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party, I would have liked to see him have more balance on this group.”[41]

Barr has been married to his wife, Christine, since 1973. As of 2018, the Barrs' daughter, Mary Daly, works at the U.S. Department of Justice; she serves as the Trump Administration's point person on the opioid crisis.[42] Barr is an avid bagpiper; he began playing the bagpipes at age 8, and has played competitively in Scotland with a major American pipe band. At one time, Barr was a member of the City of Washington Pipe Band.[43]

^Landler, Mark, "The Lawyer Leading the Charge Against the FCC's Regulations", The New York Times, 1/20/97, page D1Barrett, Paul, "GTE Lawyer Shapes Strategy for Telecommunications", The Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1996.